Educational blog articles around inbound marketing.

Marketing Objectives: What Are They and How to Define Them

For any business to thrive in the competition, it must have solid marketing strategies. The strategies play a very imperative role in creating awareness about the company and also the products or services it offers.

When a company employs solid marketing objectives, it is in a position to build organizational awareness that is firmly rooted and grow customer loyalty.

In a simple definition, marketing objectives are goals that are set by a business when it is in the mission of promoting its services or products to potential customers within a specific time frame.

In other words, marketing objectives can also be referred to as solid strategies that businesses use to be in a position to achieve main organizational objectives.

These objectives could be increasing awareness to targeted customers, providing crucial information about product or service features, minimizing customer resistance, and more.

Marketing Objectives Need a Smart Approach

When setting objectives, it's important for a business to see to it that they are measurable, focused, time-specific and realistic. This is called the smart approach.

With this approach, a business owner is in a position to manage the objectives effectively and in a manner that will help in determining how successful the objectives will turn out to be. When using the smart approach, you can look at the following factors:

If the Objectives are Focused

This simply means that the objectives are stated in a way that is precise and relevant to the business's current goals.

In order to remain focused, marketing objectives should include details about how they will be accomplished and layout what tasks will need to be carried out and any and all processes that will be used to make it happen.

If the Objectives are Measurable

In order to tell see how successful a campaign or objective is, it needs to be measurable. When an objective is measurable, it means you will be able to keep tabs on results compared to expected results.

Layout what results you are expecting to see before taking action that way you can tell how successful your efforts were and if there is anything you can improve on moving forward.

If the Objectives are Realistic

For marketing objectives to be realistic they should be based on some prior knowledge, research, or resources your business has.

This means in order to be realistic, your objectives should be in line with your budget, work force, resources, and tests that you may have previously ran.

If the Objectives are Time-Specific

For any goal to be achieved, there must be a set timeline. When do you expect to see this objective carried out by? What time frame are you looking to make this happen?

For example, if you are looking to increase leads generated what time frame are you looking to make that happen in and how many are you looking to generate in that given time frame?

Will this be a quarterly objective? If so an example of your objective could be something like, "Increase leads generated by 50% by the end of this quarter."

This objective would be time-specific because there is a very clear outline of when you expect to see these results.

Example of Making a Marketing Objective Smart

Increasing sales is perhaps one of the most obvious objectives that accompany marketing for any business that is looking to grow. In every marketing endeavor, a return on investment must be earned.

Simply put, this means that the increase in sales should be substantially bigger than the costs involved with the marketing.

Nearly every business is looking to increase sales but how do you turn this into a real marketing objective?

An example of a smart marketing objective to increase sales could be, "I want to close 5 new sales next month using pay-per-click advertising as we closed 3 sales using this method in the month prior."

It is very clear what the goal of this objective is; close 5 new sales. This objective is focused as it lays out how this will be done via ppc advertising.

The objective is time-specific as it states that this is goal for the month. It's realistic by basing this objective off of the prior performance of closing 3 sales with these methods in the month prior.

Lastly, it's measurable because it will be very clear to see how many sales are closed and if this falls short of, matches, or even exceeds expectations.

Other Common Marketing Objectives

Increase Product or Service Awareness

Many marketing objectives are mainly centered around stimulating or rather, revitalizing interest in a service or product that has been in the market for a while and that people already have notions and perceptions about.

Without a doubt, every brand strives to increase their market share so as to make sure people talk about them. Even though this seems easily measurable, there are quantitative and qualitative measures that are used by successful brands.

For instance, thought leadership is considered solely quantitative because a marketer doesn't seem to measure if the audience perceives them as an expert. However, they can at the same time measure variables that are related to being a thought leader to know where they stand.

Establish a Business in the Industry

If a business is relatively new to the market, it might be hard for it to stand out in a market that is already crowded. However, with different marketing strategies, a business can easily get noticed by a potential customer base if it markets itself through the right channels.

Market a Brand

It takes time, determination and effort to take a permanent place in the public psyche and mind. However, there are many marketing strategies that a company can employ so as to be in a position to have a permanent spot in the public space.

Successful businesses run their advertisements using appealing tones that establish a connection and resonate well with their customers and target audience.

Closing

All said and done, marketing objectives have and will continue being an important aspect of any given marketing efforts. By making your marketing objectives smart, you will increase your chances of success and the effectiveness of the objectives you set.

I hope you found this information beneficial and feel free to comment down below any thoughts or questions you may have.

ZioSolutions is an Inbound Marketing, Website Design, and Sales Enablement Agency. Founded in 2015 by Zachary Raineri and Geoff King, ZioSolutions is proud to be located in St. Louis, Missouri and active in helping others achieve marketing and sales success.